The U.S. patent of Wong, U.S. Pat. No. 5,213,864, granted May 25, 1993, is an example of the literature describing the use of heat-cured silicone resin for encapsulating microelectronic chips. Silicone resin can also be used for encapsulating electrical conductor interconnections in terminal blocks, but the volume of resin required for such use is significantly greater than that for encapsulating microelectronic chips; consequently, the time needed for heat curing such silicone is comparatively large.
The copending application of P. F. Lilienthal et al., Ser. No. 08/126,414, filed Sep. 27, 1993, describes a method for reducing the time for curing silicone resin by subjecting the resin to infrared radiation. While this method constitutes a significant improvement over curing in a conventional oven, the need for appropriate infrared apparatus complicates the production of silicone-containing products such as terminal blocks. Further, while the cure time can be reduced to 5.5 minutes by the Lilienthal et al. method, further reduction in the curing time would be desirable. Another embodiment of the Lilienthal et al. invention uses dispersed glass particles in the resin which further reduces the curing time to 3.5 minutes, but again this complicates the production process.